If you haven't been to the Tampa International Airport in the last year, let me introduce you to Phoebe the Flamingo. This clever piece of art gives us a 40-foot-tall flamingo in one one story by putting you, the viewer, under water! The installation by artist Matthew Mazzotta is titled HOME. Only the bird's head, neck, and legs are visible. The rest of the body is implied by a shimmering reflective ceiling that throws dappled lighting underneath and acts as the surface of the water. That perspective makes people the size of the shrimp that flamingos feed on. But there's no danger here. The floor around the sculpture even has warning bumps to help blind people avoid walking into it.



In late 2022, the airport launched a contest to name the flamingo. So many people participated that the procedure was extended, but early this year, Phoebe emerged as the winner. Bryan M, who first submitted the name, received free airline flights for his efforts. He says the name Phoebe is a play on the flamingo's genus Phoenicopterus.  -via reddit

Adaptive plant evolution is amazing. Over time, some plants came up with an ingenious chemical that repelled over even killed insects that tried to eat the plant, yet had enough beneficial effects that in the right concentration, it encouraged bees to help with pollination. We call this chemical caffeine. When humans discovered it, we made darn sure that those plants flourished so we could continue to harvest the world's greatest molecule. How that addiction fueled colonization and shaped human history is a story for other posts. Caffeine is so popular that MinuteEarth designed a coffee mug around it, giving them a reason to explain how caffeine works in this ad.

There are two main ways to approach Easter eggs. The first way is to look at it as a kid's activity, where they have fun dipping eggs in dyes and later go look for those eggs after you've hidden them in the yard. Then there are these people. They see eggs as an art medium, an opportunity for creative expression. Whether they use natural dyes, negative transfers, the scratch method, brush and paint, or the traditional Ukrainian pysanky method, their eggs are a feast for the eyes.  



While many are works of art, some are just plain clever and funny. Redditor samartypants once attended an egg decorating event and intended to decorate eggs as Hugh Hefner and a Playboy Bunny. But then they dropped and cracked the egg, forcing a reconsideration of the subject matter. What does a cracked egg remind you of? And this was the result.



And samartypants won the decorating competition. You can see 50 ranked examples of beautiful, clever, and amusing Easter egg designs in a roundup at Bored Panda. Take some as inspiration for your own egg decorating!

The Passover Seder is a meal full of traditions that tell the story of the Hebrews' exodus from Egypt. In the internet age, we've also established the tradition of the Passover parody song that celebrate the exodus story to the tune of a hit song. We've posted many of those over the years from the group Six-13, like Chozen, Uptown Passover, A Lion King Passover, and A Billy Joel Passover. Aish did it with two songs in 2016.

Y-Studs is another all-male Jewish a cappella group. They got together in college at Yeshiva University in New York City and stayed together after graduation to go professional. In their new song, they boost the harmony of "Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey to tell us what Passover is all about. Passover continues through the evening of April 13.

Since The Rise of Skywalker in 2019, Disney and Lucasfilm have stepped back from feature films to concentrate on TV series, with varying results. But now they think they have their ducks in a row, and have told the participants at Star Wars Celebration in London that they have plans for three new films. It won't be a trilogy, but will span the vast timeline of the Jedi order long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away.

One film will be set 25,000 years before the events of the original Star Wars trilogy, when the very first Jedi harnessed the Force. Dawn of the Jedi will be directed by James Mangold, who recently directed Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

Dave Filoni, who you know from The Mandalorian and The Clone Wars, will direct a film set in the time of The Mandalorian that deals with the conflict between the Imperial Remnant and the New Republic. It will wrap up several story lines from the TV shows The Mandalorian, the Book of Boba Fett, and Ahsoka.  

The other movie is, uh, a sequel to The Rise of Skywalker. Daisy Ridley will return as Ray Skywalker as she revives the Jedi order, 15 years after her previous adventures. The film will be directed by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, who did Ms. Marvel. The script is from Peaky Blinders writer Steven Knight.

There are no projected release dates for these films, as far as we know. Star Wars Celebration Europe will continue through Monday.

The latest song from Brian David Gilbert (previously at Neatorama) is about those trashily alluring 18+ game ads you see all over the internet (and will probably see more of them after watching this). I don't know exactly what will happen when you download them, but they have to be inevitably disappointing, if not altogether malicious. I don't click on ads for stuff I know I'm not going to buy, so they might be great, but you can't expect them to live up to the lurid hype. Anyway, the silly song is an unexpected earworm.

But then, as you listen to the song, you gradually start to realize that it's not about those ads at all, but something much more profound. Yes, there are some things that are more important than games. But you'll have to discover that for yourself. I will tell you that you'll get a kick out of the clever editing tricks and BDG in a whole wardrobe of new fashions.

The non-religious side of Easter celebrations are all about cute spring symbols. There are Easter eggs, flowers, bunny rabbits, baby chicks, and frankly babies of all kinds, mostly in pastel colors. However, those symbols are difficult to recreate in mass-produced cakes by rushed grocery store clerks who have neither the talent nor the proper materials to do it. And so Jen Yates of Cake Wrecks has yet another year's worth of funny-looking desserts to share with us. I think the cake above is supposed to be a bunny, but it has the nose of a pig and the eyes of a serious trauma victim. I have no idea what's going on with those feet. You'll find it in a roundup called 7 Reasons To Avoid The Bakery This Easter.

Oh, but there's more! Another post concentrates on chicks, with a few bunnies thrown in. This cake may have looked really nice before it was dropped, but I somehow get the idea that the jostling may have improved it. See plenty more of these Easter disasters that probably taste pretty good when you've finished laughing at Cake Wrecks.

We've heard that the dodo went extinct because it was ugly, stupid, and edible, and no one really cared when the species died out. At least that was the story we were told in the 20th century. There are misconceptions that arise when you so much. It's true that by the time anyone thought about studying the dodo, they were all gone with little evidence of the bird that once was. The dodo wasn't cute, tasty, and mysterious like the woggin. Well, maybe mysterious, but what can you do when there are none left? It was only in 2005 that we finally found enough dodo bones to really figure out what they were all about. Dodos were actually pretty well adapted to their environment on the island of Mauritius, at least before humans came along. What happened then might just surprise you. The story of the dodo is only seven minutes long, despite the video length. -via Damn Interesting

Our closest neighboring planet is entirely populated by robots, and is constantly under surveillance by a satellite taking pictures. And you can see it! NASA has released an interactive map of Mars created by CalTech that has an astonishing amount of detail. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been at work for 17 years photographing the planet, which gave us the 110,000 images used in the map. A choice of destinations at the bottom will lead you to the rovers, past and present, plus standout locations like Mars' biggest mountain, Olympus Mons. You can zoom in and out to see more detail. A hamburger menu on the upper right will toggle some neat features, like labeled names for the places you're seeing. Click those location dots, and you'll get information about the place names. For example, Pangboche is a crater named in 2006 for a village in Nepal. You can imagine the scientist who named it proudly honoring his hometown.  

It's wild to see such a detailed map of a place that no one has ever ever been to. Gizmodo has more information about the project and warns us that  the 5.7 trillion pixel map may load slowly on older computers.

(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

Rainbows are what happens when sunlight is split into its various colors by the prismatic action of moisture in the air. You are most likely to see one after a rain shower, when the sunlight returns and shines on the storm that's headed off to the east, or when the air retains enough water to act as a prism. We call it a rainbow because it is an arc, or bow, in the sky. The thing is that we are only seeing a small portion of the rainbow as an arc. The full phenomenon is a circle, but we can't see it because it's so big. The earth gets in the way. You might even see a rainbow as an almost-straight line if it's big enough, and is either obstructed or has gaps in the moisture.

Theoretical astrophysicist Ethan Siegel explains how sunlight becomes separated into its component colors in a way that you don't have to be an astrophysicist to understand. He explains why all rainbows are alike, except for their size and the way they may be obstructed. And he gives us two ways to see one as a full circle: the first one involves flying over a rainbow, which may be beyond our ability. The second one only requires a water hose, which I find myself doing every time I use a hose in the middle of a sunny day. Read all about rainbows at Big Think. -via Kottke

Here we have an example of two subreddits mashing up just for fun. You are probably familiar with AITA (Am I The Asshole?) which can be pretty grim. But the Musicals subreddit is full of musical theater fans who know their stuff. Redditor DukeCummings launched a thread in which people post an AITA in the persona of a character from a well-known musical. The idea is that characters see themselves as the good guy even when they are doing awful things. The real kicker is that these are crafted so that the musical and the character are not named, and we are left to guess who they are. Broadway Baseball gives us an example. 

AITA for pitting guys against each other for my praise, and for letting kith kill their kin in my name? There’s this guy who pines so for me — he’s very dashing, and brave, and pure… anyway, he’s also really arrogant, so I thought I’d knock him down a peg or two. So I got three of the best fighters around to challenge him, hoping to show him some humility. Well, as I said, this particular guy is so brave and daring and strong, and he actually defeated all three fighters. He even killed one! He felt horribly bad about it. He’s so sensitive. Anyway, my husband says I was cruel to challenge him so. AITA?

Another from room317 may be easier to guess.

Recently took a job as a nanny. There are a LOT of kids. The parent is a widower, which, like, I feel for him. However, the dude is UNBEARABLE. He FREAKED when I used some fabric around the house to try out my sewing skills to make some dresses. And, THE WORST, he claims that since his wife sang around the house, I'm absolutely not allowed. Like, what is this? I like to sing. The man has children who like to sing. I can't possibly be TA, right?

What makes this so intriguing is that there are no answers given. Everyone in the subreddit knows these musicals. Some have a clue in the replies with a snippet of song lyrics you can look up, but otherwise you will only recognize the characters from the musicals you've seen, and the others will be a mystery. I only recognized the older ones. But it's a lot of fun to try and guess! -via Metafilter

In this stop-motion video, a guy who we assume is a slacker of sorts because he's messy, falls asleep and then his toy car comes to life and takes over his room, using his phone charger for power. That's a smart, spunky little car! It's only when the guy wakes up that we find out the dream (if it really was a dream) actually means something important- specifically a trip through the past. It wasn't a dream; it was a wake up call! 

Japanese YouTuber omozoc (previously at Neatorama) makes clever stop-motion animations and has built a subscriber base of two million. It seems to be starting to pay off for him, because even though you don't realize it until the end of this video, it's an ad for the Chinese electric car company Build Your Dreams. I guess it worked, because I've never heard of the company until today.  -via Nag on the Lake

Barnum Brown was named after P.T. Barnum, but his passion was more mundane than the showman's. As a young boy, he followed the machinery of his father's Kansas strip mine operation to search for fossils. Brown studied paleontology in college (a fairly new discipline at the time) and made a reputation for himself. Under the patronage of Henry Osborn of the American Museum of Natural History, Brown was able to find amazing dinosaur fossils and get his master's degree.

An expedition to Montana in the summer of 1902 yielded Brown's biggest discovery yet- a new species of dinosaur that may have been 40 feet long, which Osborn named Tyrannosaurus rex. Osborn also allowed others to credit him with the discovery. Brown remained in the background, and even found two more T. rexes while Osborn was publicizing the find. But the dinosaur itself was an even bigger star than either man. Read the story of the man behind T. rex at Mental Floss.

(Image credit: Jon Parise)

There are many different reasons why people spend time in a coma: illness, injury, surgery, or a medically-induced coma for various reasons. Their memories of that time vary even more widely. Some don't recall anything. Some were not even aware of the passage of time. Some had very vivid and weird dreams that stayed with them for years. And some had experiences that strangely melded dreams with reality.

"I remember hearing a woman telling me to squeeze her hand. I found out later that they brought me out of the coma to see if I was brain dead. I squeezed her hand, and they put me back under for several more weeks. I remember being taken to a spaceship orbiting Earth so I could be repaired. I found out that I was actually a cyborg. While I was on the ship, something ruptured the hull, and the ship lost atmosphere and everything froze. I was frozen in place but fully aware that I was frozen and could not move. I was now certain that I would spend eternity fully awake and immobile on this ship, never able to shut down." —Keri1986

You'll also read strange cases of people whose personalities changed after a coma, and one patient who recovered to prove his brother wrong, in a list at Buzzfeed. There are even more such stories in the comments.

(Image credit: Mohsen Atayi)

With egg prices still high, the potato industry is looking to scramble up Easter traditions with a budget-friendly alternative: Easter potatoes. https://t.co/fP2M9FEaE2

— Axios (@axios) April 2, 2023

It started out as a joke, an internet meme, then leaked into the real world- potatoes as an alternative to eggs for Easter egg hunts. The price of eggs has been historically high over the past year, but the price of potatoes has risen only 13%. So why not have children decorate potatoes and hunt them for the holiday? Once potato producers heard of the joke, they jumped on it, hoping to sell some potatoes and maybe start a new tradition. There are plenty of tutorials online on how to paint Easter potatoes.

Besides the difference in price, the benefits of using potatoes include less breakage, and the fact that if you use food-safe paint, the potatoes can be cooked and served afterward. People rarely do that with Easter eggs, which are ultimately out of the refrigerator for who knows how long. But overall, it's more of a meme than a reality, as egg hunts have nothing to do with the religious holiday, and so many people use plastic eggs anyway, which are cheap and can be used year after year. Personally, one chocolate egg is enough for me. -via Digg